Scottish Borders Secondary Schools Connected via Gigabit Fibre

Scotland-based UK business ISP Commsworld, under direction from consultancy firm CGI, have recently finished laying 20km of fibre optic cabling to overhaul and upgrade their Borders infrastructure, resiliency and capacity to help connect all of the region’s nine secondary schools to gigabit speed broadband.

The recent upgrade means that all 6,296 secondary school pupils in the Scottish Borders area, along with their teachers, can now benefit from a “next generation network” capable of delivering speeds “500 times faster” than the average UK broadband connection.

This is because the latest network extension has been linked to Commsworld’s Optical Core Network, which is built on around 1,500 miles of Dark Fibre – giving the ISP full control to deliver scalable bandwidth. Businesses and organisations – including other Scottish Borders Council offices – located in and around the vicinity of each of the secondary schools should also be able to benefit.

Steve Wood, Group Sales Director for Commsworld, said:

“We are proud to have delivered this work after four months and ahead of schedule. The results will be not only transformative for every secondary school in the Scottish Borders, but also enable the region’s rural towns, its businesses and organisations, and its citizens to access much higher bandwidths with much greater resilience.

It means that Scottish Borders Council is leading the way in rural connectivity. This is a template for success that needs to be replicated throughout other areas of Scotland, and indeed the UK, which are crying out for better digital connectivity.

Such connectivity in the long term will boost not only education and teaching in schools, but also deliver the capacity for more cutting-edge digital systems and processes in areas such as social care, health, the environment and sustainability as we continue to work towards a net-zero economy by 2045.”

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